In a display of power that ought to be used for public benefit, California’s public servants have instead prioritized their personal financial interests. Unions representing the state’s police and firefighters pushed a bill through the state legislature that will increase their pension benefits, despite the state’s pension systems barely achieving solvency thanks to critical reforms passed in 2012 combined with a stock market that has roared almost continuously since 2009.
To suggest that the American stock market will never end what is—notwithstanding a brief dip during the COVID era—one of the longest bull runs in history is to deny reality. But in a unanimous 33-0 vote in the state senate and a nearly unanimous 70-2 vote in the state assembly, denying economic reality is exactly what California’s legislators did. Assembly Bill 1383 will, as even California’s liberal political news site CalMatters put it, “let first responders retire earlier and with more money.”
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